With a full year of being on “our farm” behind us, it is wonderful to look back on all of our work and all of the new dreams that have sprung from that work.

This year our “spare time” was spent cleaning the farm, particularly cleaning out barn stalls, sheds, and coops to get ready for more animals and hopefully a more efficient running farm. We have cleared out a lot of junk/trash (3 trips to the dump) to start assessing where new fence lines, corrals, coops, and gardens will go. Anyone who did not see the farm before would not think we have done much. Luckily, I took some before photos/videos to remind us how far we have come.

Side of the coop before.

Looking in from the other side.

The girls love the “after”.

Front of the coop before.

Much better!

The decision to downsize our 2014 chicken production was hard. We love our customers and we love that they love our chicken so much. Even though we needed to do this to take care of other tasks on the farm, by mid summer, we were already talking about ramping back up for 2015. We don’t have exact numbers, but will probably only do an extra 100 this year. So if you would like chicken in the spring or fall, let us know NOW.

The up-side of the downsizing is having the time to organize something we have been talking about for over a year…offering chicken raising and butchering classes. If you go to our new “Our Classes” tab, you will find 3 different classes to get you prepared to raise and process your own food. Depending on the interest, we may add more classes in the fall.

This year we also became a dealer for Fertrell feed supplements and fertilizers and distributor for organic feeds. We use the Fertrell Nutri-Balancer, Aragonite, and Fish Meal with our layers and meat birds, and we love the results. A little of these products goes a long way and makes a huge difference in the end quality of your eggs and meat. You can find more information on Fertrell products here, as well as, our price list.

My garden did pretty well this year. The layer of cardboard and straw helped a lot with weeds. I was able to can 2 gallons of tomatoes and made about 2.5 pints of chili powder from my own ancho chilis! The mulberry and cherry tree provided us with some lovely treats as well. I started my Hugelkultur garden and will be finishing that this spring. The plan for this year is to concentrate on growing our staple foods…garlic, onions, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peppers, and peanuts.

We lost one of our cows, Solei, but also had 2 calves, McRib and Geri. We let 3 hens go broody and they hatched out a dozen chicks. I love having momma hens! Downsizing meat chickens meant only processing 189 this year. Yes, that is downsizing. Fred and I had an all-time best time of 42 chickens processed in one day. Hard to believe doing 20 with help used to wipe us out.

And…we got married! Fred proposed Christmas 2013 and the following October we had a small ceremony on our farm. In true Fred style, he not only carved my engagement ring from walnut, he cast our wedding rings from 2 spoons from my grandmother collection. Yes, I am lucky to have him. I made my bouquet flowers from rooster feathers and my sister knit my wedding shawl. My niece, Bella, was our unconventional flower girl and she and my nephew, Kees, were in charge of picking pasture flowers for the tables. Our friend Jamie preformed the ceremony in the middle of a circle of family and friends in our pasture. It was a perfect day and so perfectly “us”.

“Figure out what works for you and do it. Then do it again. But first figure out what works for YOU. To figure out what works for you, you have to move, you have to try, you have to fail, you have to look silly, you have to shine, you have to cry, you have to be on the edge of giving up and pull yourself back, you have to ignore how everyone else is doing it. You can’t figure out what will or won’t work by thinking about it forever and doing nothing.”—Christie Halmick

A good friend of ours posted this on Facebook and it rings true to what have been doing the past 2 years. And after much consideration, deliberation, and uncertainty, we are getting closer to figuring out what works for us. It has been a tough season for us. Crazy weather, major surgery for 2 family members, doubling our chicken production, haying, new animals, buying a house, etc. We made it through it all, but there were a lot of things we didn’t have time for…like my garden. And there were lots of times that crying and giving up was all I wanted to do.

One thing I have learned about having a business is the necessity of reassessing your goals and figuring out how to keep your work from feeling like a job. About half way through our season, we both started to feel a bit run ragged. So we reassessed. What is it that we want for us? For our customers? What can we realistically do and keep our sanity and not go into debt? One of the hardest things about trying to answer these questions is knowing all the awesome people we do, who are doing amazing thing. Things WE want to do as well.

You know so-and-so got ducks. AW, I want ducks!
Maybe we could get a couple of alpacas…?
He has a yak for sale?…I WANT A YAK!!!

And so it goes, making it harder to stick with what we want and what we can do at this point in time. Because seriously, I WILL get a yak some day. But the good thing about me and Fred is that we both mull things over. We ponder. A lot. No snap decisions here, that is for sure. So after a lot of pondering, we have good news and not so good news to share. First the not so good…

It is with a very heavy heart that we announce the downsizing our chicken production next season. We have loved providing all of our customers with healthy tasty chicken and being a part of the Bem General CSA. We doubled our production from last year and still sold out. With this overwhelming support from our community, it makes it even harder. Chickens are a lot of work, both to raise and process. Since we can’t bring ourselves to do the 2 things that could make continuing chickens easier..1- raising Cornish Crosses and 2- having someone else do the butchering…we have to downsize to make room for other ventures. We love raising chickens and will continue on a much smaller scale during the fall for family and friends. Raising fall chickens uses less electricity for brooding, keeps them from being heat stressed in the summer, and provides more pleasant weather for butchering. We will have some extras available, and I will keep that info up-to-date on the website.

Fred milking Momma.

AND THE GOOD!!!
This summer we bought our own farm and have expanded our livestock to include dairy cows and rabbits. The Milking Devon cow, Momma, is now milking and the calf, Clem (short for Clementine), is working on her oxen commands. Momma was artificially inseminated in November, and hopefully we will have a calf soon. We would like all our Devons to have oxen training to some extent. Once we are able to increase our herd, we will be offering Devon beef, as well. Our silver Fox rabbits will hopefully provide us with another meat source and allow me to try my hand at tanning.

The new house!

The farm needs a lot of work. Besides cleaning out and fixing up all of the out buildings, we also need to get a good perimeter fence put up. Thankfully the pastures are in pretty good shape. We started cleaning up all the outbuildings and have great plans for restoring the old chicken house (maybe with the help of some straw bales or earth packed tires), making one into Fred’s workshop, and maybe offering a B&B in the “little house” that sits on the original foundation. We are still a long way from all of that, but each time I clear out a space, the vision of what we will have gets clearer.

While there is a lot to look forward to, we also got a lot accomplished this year.
– Even though we are trying to move away from haying towards extended rotational grazing, we put up approximately 900 square bales (that’s twice as much as last year and a HUGE thank you to the Halmicks for their help).
– We started our Milking Devon herd and tried out artificial insemination (thanks Kathleen and Dr. Koch).
– We built a 1/2 acre chicken oasis for our layers to have a safe place to roam.
– Our two steers were butchered.
– We made a new bigger chicken tractor and a brooder house.
– We participated in Gerald Mule Days processing sorghum grass into sorghum syrup.
– We had 2 hens hatch out 8 chicks.
– We produced a gallon of maple syrup.
– We started harvesting duckweed as a food source for our animals.
– We raised 4 Wessex Sadddleback pigs.
– After a great apple season, I canned apple butter and applesauce and dehydrated some (thanks John and Adele).
– Fred’s parents had a lot of tomatoes, so I canned about 2 gallons of rotel.
– We received a Slow Foods Grant to help promote heritage breed livestock.
– I applied for a SARE grant to conduct research on the farm.

I know I am forgetting other accomplishments, so let’s just say it was a busy and productive year.

And the BEST news…Fred and I are getting married! Christmas morning Fred surprised me with a hand carved engagement ring. We had talked about marriage earlier in the year, and I figured that started the pondering clock, so it would be another year or two before he asked. I did not need any time to ponder my answer.

Fred carved my engagement ring from a walnut tree on the farm.

Again, we would like to thank our family, friends, and customers for their support, help, and understanding throughout the year. We have big plans for 2014, so make sure you sign up for email notifications to be the first in the know!

Getting the hay ready to bale.

Pressing sorghum grass to make sorghum syrup.

Our first hatch!

The new chicken oasis.

Maxie with the chicks in the new tractor.

My two favorites I had to say good-bye to this year, Ron Rico and Pee-Wee.

After I wrote my post about Agnes the rooster getting killed, my Dad asked that I not post anymore sad stories. That’s a hard request to honor. As much as beauty, wonder, and magic are part of the farm, so is death, dying, and killing. Every day, and I mean EVERY SINGLE DAY, I am in total and complete awe of something. We don’t have to STOP to smell the roses, we can enjoy them every day, all day. Whether it’s the wild violet popping up to announce spring, the snow clinging to the trees like a white shadow, the lightning bugs continuing the starry night into the trees and pastures, or walking the fence line enjoying the silence…there are so many things to soak in and appreciate. But for every good, there must be a bad.

Something we hear a lot from people is, “I would love to raise my own food, but I couldn’t kill an animal”. My answer is always that it is one of the hardest parts of what we do. The hardest part would be finding an animal dead or having to euthanize it. Yes, death is death. But there is something about an animal that doesn’t get to fulfill its purpose that makes me very sad. We’ve had chicks that just die. We had a calf, Caroline, that was lame and when we couldn’t get her to stand, we had to euthanize her. Then there are the cases where being a responsible owner mean you make the choice that is best for the animal. Fred’s horse, Honey, was very old and sick and we couldn’t stand to see her suffer through the summer heat, so we put her down. We butchered 200+ chickens last season and every one was hard. With each one, we say, “I am sorry”. The night before, Fred and I always have knots in our stomachs. One reason our business stays small is that we do all the butchering here on the farm. There is a place about an hour away that we could take them to be processed, but we just can’t bring ourselves to do that. Part of why we do what we do is so we know how the animal is treated. After caring for them, singing to them, giving them a good life, I can’t see us piling them into a trailer and driving them to their death. This May, we send two steer to be butchered. If we were set up better, we would do the slaughter on the farm and take them in to be only processed. I feel like if anyone is going to do the killing, it should be us, not a stranger.

I heard a story about a woman who asked a person who raised their chickens to eat, why they couldn’t just get their chicken from the store like everyone else. Let that soak in for a minute. I think most people are just as out of touch with where their food comes from as what it means to raise your own food. Yes, I have killed chickens. To eat and to stop their suffering. It’s not easy. But I think one of the ways I am able to do this is because I have raised them. I see chicken and beef in a store, and I think, “no one loved that animal”, “no one tossed and turned at night wondering if they were ok”. Seems odd to think that caring for them enables me to kill them. But knowing how they lived, and the compassion given at their death, does make it bearable.

The other day I came across a rabbit nest while we were putting up the pig pen. One of the small dogs was in the pen, and I noticed she had something in her mouth. I looked closer and thought it was a vole. Then, I noticed 4 little rabbits in a nest. My heart jumped. I checked them and they were all dead. I am afraid that when we came into that part of the pasture, it scared the mother off, and they died because of us. It was hard to see them all dead. Part of me had hoped I could have raised them…had my own litter of bunnies. In the end, they would have had the same fate, but at least if I had raised them, they would have been safe and lived a good life.

It’s the circle of life, the way it goes, and we all have our place in the food chain. But I think it’s how we face death and what we do before it that makes the difference. With people and with animals. So we try to make our life and our animals life the best it can be.

This is Serena, and we are very happy to start this season on the farm and have a way to share all that is going on. Fred has enough computer time at his off-farm job, so I am taking on the website as my “job”. Our hope is to use this website and my blog posts as a way to inform, include, and inspire our customers, friends, family, and anyone else who wanders on to our page.

We broke down the posts into the following categories:Our Animals: You can get acquainted with our animals and find out what we are doing with them. Moving the cows, new calves, working with horses, etc.

Projects: See what we are building and using on the farm. Trampoline wood sheds and chicken tractors, pallet trellises, etc.

Mother Nature: Learn about all the natural treasures and creatures found around the farm. Bird’s nests, turtles, our resident red shoulder hawks, etc.

Our Garden: What we are growing, ideas, and techniques I use in our garden. No-till gardening, permaculture, natural pest control, etc.

Recipes: Recipes I love and ones using what we grow in the garden and raise on the farm. Real pecan pie, how to brine chicken, chicory coffee, etc.

Farm Life: This is where I will post my week in reviews and use as a catch all for whatever doesn’t fit in the other categories.

So far I have posts about making maple syrup, making sugar, growing sweet potatoes, a real pecan pie recipe, how to brine chicken, and what we planning to grow in the garden this year all in the works. With a new batch of Freedom Ranger chicks coming, you can see how we care for them. Expanding our layers with Dorkings and creating a chicken oasis for them will show you how easy it is to have your own flock. Pigs are coming in May, so you can find out how we raise our pigs and learn along with me about making sausage and chorizo, curing ham and bacon, and making lye soap. I am starting the gardens as no-till plots, so you can follow along as I resist the urge to turn the soil.

If you are interested in buying chicken, beef, honey, or pork, availability and prices will be kept up-to-date under their respective category.

We have a lot planned this year so if you want to get email notifications of new posts, look to the right of this page and subscribe to our website.

We are looking forward to letting you have a peek into our farm life and joining us in this adventure.